Getting started: from signup to first sale

You can have a working store in about fifteen minutes, and a store you are proud to share in about a day. This guide covers both: what happens when you sign up, what the setup wizard actually does, what every item in your sidebar is for, and the short list of things worth finishing before you post your link anywhere.

Creating your account

Signing up needs three things: a store name, a Bangladeshi phone number, and a password.

• Your store name becomes your web address automatically. “Rahim Fashion” gives you something like rahim-fashion.sohojdokan.com. You can change the address later, so do not agonise over it now.
• Your phone number is your login, so use one you will keep. It has to be a Bangladeshi mobile number in the 01XXXXXXXXX format.
• Your password needs at least 6 characters.

We then text you a 6-digit code to prove the number is yours. The code is valid for 5 minutes, you get 3 attempts at entering it, and you can request a new code up to 3 times an hour. If nothing arrives, check the number you typed before requesting again, since a resend to the wrong number will not help.

Enter the code and your store exists. You get a free .sohojdokan.com address that works immediately, and depending on the offer you signed up through, a free trial may already be running.

The setup wizard

New stores land on a short wizard that gets you to a sellable store without hunting through the dashboard. Four steps, and every one of them is skippable.

Step 1: Choose your look

Pick a ready-made theme. Colours, fonts and layout all get set in one tap, and you can change or fine-tune any of it later in the Theme Builder. Pick the one that looks closest to what you sell and move on. This is not the decision to spend twenty minutes on.

Step 2: Add your first product

Just a name and a price, with a category and a photo if you have them ready. One product is enough to make the store real and to see how everything fits together. You will add the rest properly later.

Step 3: Set up delivery

Two shortcuts do most of the work here: Inside Dhaka and Outside Dhaka, each with a charge. Or switch on free delivery for now if you are still working out your rates.

Do not skip this one. Without delivery zones and with free delivery off, customers cannot complete checkout at all. This is the single most common reason a brand new store takes no orders.

Step 4: Contact and go live

Add a public phone number customers can reach you on. Cash on Delivery is already switched on for you, so you can take orders from this moment.

Then you get your store link with a copy button and a preview button. That link is a real, working shop.

Note: The wizard is resume-safe. Leave halfway through and it picks up at the first unfinished step. Once your store has a product, delivery set up and a contact number, it stops appearing and sends you to the dashboard instead.

A tour of your dashboard

The sidebar is longer than it first appears, because some items only show up once you enable them. Here is what everything is for:

Item	What it is
Dashboard	Your home screen, with today’s numbers
Orders	Every order, and where you spend most of your time
Incomplete Orders	Shoppers who started checkout and did not finish
Products	Your catalog
Analytics	Visitors, traffic sources, top products
Categories and Tags	How your catalog is organised
Delivery Settings	Charges, zones and couriers
Theme Builder	The look of your storefront
Pages	About, Privacy, Terms and similar
Integrations	Payments, pixels, WhatsApp, couriers
Advanced	Optional features and Domain Management
Subscription	Your plan and billing
Settings	Store name, logo, languages, contact details

Items like Point of Sale, Coupons, Landing Pages, SMS Settings, User Management and Staff Management appear only after you switch them on under Advanced. That is deliberate. A shorter sidebar is faster to work in, so turn on what you need and leave the rest alone.

Basic and Advanced dashboard views

Your home screen has a toggle between Basic and Advanced. Basic keeps today’s essentials in front of you. Advanced adds the order pipeline, a payment-methods breakdown, repeat-customer stats, conversion rate, top products by revenue and low-stock alerts. Your choice is remembered per store, so switch to Advanced once your store has enough activity to make those numbers meaningful.

Before you share your link

Your store works from the moment the wizard finishes. Whether it is ready for customers is a different question. This is the short list worth finishing first:

Check	Why it matters
Real product photos	The single biggest factor in whether a stranger buys
Prices and delivery charges correct	Wrong numbers cost you money or trust, take your pick
A payment method beyond COD	An advance payment removes most fake orders
Public contact number	On a cash-on-delivery store, a visible number is a trust signal
Site description filled in	It is what people read in the link preview before tapping
A test order placed	The only way to know checkout genuinely works

None of this takes long, and skipping it usually costs more than doing it. A store with three good photos and a working checkout outsells a store with thirty rushed ones.

Placing a test order

Open your storefront in a normal browser tab, exactly as a customer would, and buy something.

Go through the whole thing: pick a product, add it to the cart, choose a delivery zone, and place the order with cash on delivery. Then open Orders in your dashboard and confirm it arrived with the right total and the right delivery charge.

This catches the mistakes that are embarrassing to discover from a real customer: a delivery zone with no charge set, a product with no price, checkout blocked because no zones exist. It takes two minutes.

You can delete the test order afterwards, or just mark it Cancelled and leave it as a record.

Your first week, in order

If you would rather have a plan than a list, this is a sensible order:

1. Day 1: finish the wizard, add three or four real products with good photos, and place a test order.
2. Day 2: set your real delivery zones, add a payment method beyond COD, and fill in your contact details and site description in Settings.
3. Day 3: connect the Facebook catalog feed and turn on the chat and call buttons. Both are quick and both keep working forever.
4. Day 4: spend proper time in the Theme Builder now that you have real products to look at.
5. Day 5: connect your Meta Pixel before you spend anything on ads.
6. Then: share your link, tagged with utm_source so you can tell what worked.

A custom domain can come whenever you like. It is not needed to start selling, and your .sohojdokan.com address works perfectly in the meantime.

Logging in and password resets

Log in with your phone number and password. If you forget the password, use Forgot password, and we send a code to your phone to set a new one.

For security, repeated failed login attempts temporarily lock further attempts on that account. If you get locked out, wait a few minutes rather than trying again immediately, and use the password reset if you genuinely cannot remember it.

Common questions

What you notice	Why
The verification code did not arrive	Check the number you typed. Codes last 5 minutes and you can request 3 an hour
Customers cannot complete checkout	You have no delivery zones and free delivery is off
Your store link works but looks empty	Products are still Draft, or none have been added yet
The setup wizard stopped appearing	Your store has a product, delivery and a contact number, so it is done
Sidebar items are missing	Optional features are off. Turn them on under Advanced
Your storefront is offline	Your trial or subscription has expired. See the Subscription page
Your web address is not what you wanted	Change it under Advanced, then Domain Management

On your phone

The merchant app does everything covered here. For a new store it is often the fastest way to build a catalog, since you can photograph a product and publish it in about a minute without moving files onto a computer. Orders, products, analytics and settings are all there too.

Tips

• Do not skip the delivery step. A store nobody can check out from looks broken rather than new.
• Add three good products rather than twenty rushed ones. You can always add more, but a bad first impression is expensive.
• Place a test order before you share your link with anyone, every single time you change something big about checkout.
• Leave the theme decision until you have real products on the page. Themes look completely different with actual content in them.
• Use Draft while you are still working on a product, and Active when it is genuinely ready.
• Keep your login phone number current. It is how you get back in and how expiry reminders reach you.

What’s next

For the individual steps in more depth, see create your account, choose a plan and start your trial, log in and reset your password, dashboard tour, and advanced features. Then go on to add a product and set up delivery zones.